an opinionated sports blog

November 17, 2008

A tie? Seriously? What bothers me more than the way that Philadelphia couldn’t hit a field goal within the 15 minutes of overtime — or score more than 13 points for that matter — is that now we’ll be subjected to the hopelessly annoying x-x-1 at the ends of the Eagles and Bengals records on all the crawls we’ll see on sports highlight shows and news programs. I hate those -1s.

So the Titans are still undefeated and are getting it done when teams have started to shut down their vaunted running game. Hmm, a team adjusting as other teams try to take away their strengths? That sounds an awful lot like the Patriots of last year. The Pats passed like it was nobody’s difference and ran the ball when it was ineffective, the Titans are now doing that in reverse. The biggest difference is that the Titans actually have a good coach who doesn’t cheat and won’t run up the score.

What a bizarre end to the Steelers-Chargers game. I’m still unclear as to why Polamalu’s fumble return on the botched lateral didn’t count but in the end it doesn’t really matter in the standings. The only thing is that it’s was quite a swerve for gamblers. The difference between the one point win and a eight point win would’ve had the Steelers covering instead of the Chargers beating the spread.

How about them Bucs? They looked impressive against the Vikings on both offence and defence. They consistently stuffed the Vikes running game and ran up the middle against the Williamses like nobody has done this season. If only they can take that act on the road and dominate away from the Bay. Maybe they were just trying to impress Tiger Woods, who was there on the sidelines.

Quickly: You know it’s a bad blow out when network affiliates switch away from your game like they did when Green Bay turned it full-on against the Bears … The Colts own Sage Rosenfels … So apparently Miami can win, but I’ll never trust them to cover big spreads, that’s for certain.

I don’t usually comment on NCAA football unless something big happens in a bowl game but this outcome was surprising to say the least. Houston 70, Tulsa 30. Why is this surprising you may ask (if you don’t follow college football that is)? Well Tulsa happened to be the 23rd ranked team in the country and had a record of 8-1. Houston was and is unranked with a record of 5-4 going into the game. How in the world does a top-25 team lose a team that’s just barely over .500? I guess it just proves that anything can happen in sports.

Finally, why was there any doubt that Brock Lesnar couldn’t beat Randy Couture? The guy is a monster and had almost every physical advantage possible over the defending champ. When a fighter outweighs his opponent by 45 pounds, is two inches taller and 14 years younger, those are huge advantages. Not to mention Couture hadn’t fought in 15 months as well. Also, how does a guy not defend a title for over a year? There should be a minimum time you can hold a title and not defend it — 15 months of inactivity is way too long.

The Cowboys and especially Marion Barber played like a good team should last night. They visited their rival and defeated them in prime time. They looked fresh coming off the bye week and kept on getting better as the game went along. That’s what you need to do as a potential playoff team and as Tony Romo heals while playing, he’ll only become more confident. I’m pretty certain that his first pick was a bad throw resulting from his finger while the second was because TO was blasted while catching the ball, causing to pop out.

And silly me, I totally forgot to pick the Monday Nighter this week. I’ll take Cleveland +5 in Buffalo. Edwards has not looked sharp under the centre the past few weeks and while safety Donte Whitner might play, the Bills are still missing Aaron Schobel. Brady Quinn covers it.